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Wednesday, 27 September 2017

A nice easy post today, a simple photo of a Spotted Crake. Funny that nobody calls them Spotcrake in the same way that Spotfly is a well known contraction. Maybe they do? I don't however, as with this species familiarity has yet to breed contempt. This bird was at the Ingrebourne Valley at the weekend, and was the second I have seen there. It is probably still there now actually, but I only have weekends in which to prove this beyond reasonable doubt, unlike every other person on the planet who can seemingly rock up on more or less any day they choose. This caused at least one well-known birder to whom this applies to publicly express envy of the happy five days a week I am lucky enough not be able to spend birding. His point was? No, I don't know either.

Thursday, 21 September 2017

I tweet, I text, I whatsapp (if that is a word?).
I am the very definition of modern. And let me tell you, modern has a lot to
answer for. Right now I am in despair at the minute by minute aspect of modern
life, specifically the lack of time that most people seem prepared to devote to
anything. I use social media as an example, but you could as easily apply it to the news, where you work, how you shop, and even to how
you vote. People want headlines and soundbites, almost everything today must be
distilled into as few words as possible, and ideally have a conclusion
pre-formed so that nobody has to do any thinking for themselves. The most
important issues of our times are compressed into tiny snippets, lacking almost
entirely in decent information. And unless what is left takes less than ten
seconds the vast majority of people simply lose interest. We are vacuous in the extreme. It is the same at work, bullet points only please. If somebody has to
think about something, that’s it – they move on and you have lost them. As a society we have become conditioned to brevity and to dumbing down – the two go hand in
hand. Is it any wonder things like Brexit happen?Attempting to write a blog has brought this
home to me in quite a simple way, and I thought I’d jot a few things down in
order to make the point. Writing – actual writing – is hard. Contrary to what
you may think, each and every paragraph requires thought and consideration,
there is no effortless flow here, no stream of consciousness that can lay down
1000 words in a matter of minutes. For the most part if I have an idea of what
I want to say, I find myself composing things in my head as I walk around –
frequently this is on the commute when I retreat into my inner shell and strap
on my armour. My physical form is being crushed by humanity (or maybe not given I am on the Central Line), my literary form
is buzzing, thinking a thousand thoughts, forming sentences and pithy one-liners.
When I reach a keyboard out it all comes, a jumble of those musings. Then of
course it has to be sorted, shaped, reordered. Sometimes re’written’ entirely. And of course sometimes nothing comes out at all, a day at work has frazzled me and I am left incapable of stringing even a few words together. I resort to gin and instead
potter around the greenhouse. Occasionally this goes on for a few weeks and I am entirely silent. The point I am trying to make is that writing takes time. It
might come fairly naturally to me, but that does not mean it is quick. Over the
years, over eight and a half now, I have spent countless hours bashing out blog
posts - around 1500 of them. That’s a big commitment, and it’s increased by the time taken to process
and upload photos, to tinker with links, lists, maps, and all the other things
that form a part of it.As well as this avenue for the written word I also have a couple of Twitter accounts,
and several times a day I might offer up some small nugget on one of them. Unlike the blog, almost
no thought goes into this at all – with 140 characters to play with you could
argue that you need to work even harder to craft a message, but actually it’s a
far less intensive medium that I suspect takes most people almost no brain
power. I offer up President Trump by way of example. So, a brief sentence that
requires practically no effort to produce and can be done in seconds, versus several
paragraphs of carefully honed prose that might have been, on and off, the
product of an entire day. Of these, which do you think is likely to generate
the most comment, the most interaction, the most introspection and response?

Exactly. It is the single sentence and this is the problem. And it is by such a wide margin that the blog does not even figure. Most posts
I write are eventually clicked on (though not necessarily read I surmise!) a few hundred
times. By contrast a two second tweet will likely get a couple of replies, a
few 'likes', possibly a retweet. Now you could argue that none of this matters
and you are right, it doesn’t. But the inverse proportionality of effort I
actually find quite irritating, and it leads me back to the beginning of this post
and the society we have become. When a blog, article, editorial or whatever it is is too long, or contains too much
within it to allow reflection to be sufficiently brief, it has no future. Instead it takes almost
no effort to 'like' or 'favourite' a tweet, literally none – it is the perfect button really.
Tap, scroll on. Next! Actually composing a reply is also the work of mere seconds. A few
squiggles on the phone, and blur of fingers, and it’s done. Two seconds to read
it, a few seconds to consider it, perhaps ten seconds to reply back - including
correcting the predictive text. The whole thing is done in almost the blink of
an eye and we have moved on to something else. We are being trained to have the
attention span of gnats – Breaking News! - and most of are coming up that curve very well
indeed! I despair. When is the last time anyone read a book?

So when it comes to writing a blog post I
am beginning to question why it is that I bother? The reality must be that
nobody gets beyond the first two sentences before giving up as it is too much
like hard work. That is the almost inescapable conclusion I am sadly coming to. Or, as many of my
good friends have pointed out, it’s just really really boring! I’m backing
myself on this one though. Yeah you might have to think a bit, not a lot but a
bit, but actually as a medium this is far better than a tweet. Better than Facebook, Whatsapp or Instagram or any of the thousands of ways people can now rapidly and blithely communicate. Actual writing is far more able to convey meaning, emotion and fact. That it and the printed press in general is gradually withering and dying is a very great shame, or at least I think so. I'm off to the greenhouse. Via gin and tonic.

Monday, 18 September 2017

Between lulls in Redstart activity last
weekend my fellow patch-workers and I got to talking about our best moments on
the patch. What was interesting was the almost total agreement between us of
which particular days those were, so much do they stand out from the norm. The
norm of course is what we were doing, standing around chatting as there was
nothing much else to do – most days on the patch stand out for being really
really boring and containing very little bird interest. Very very occasionally
there is some major excitement which anywhere on the coast would be classified
as “Much about?” “Nah mate, dead”, but round here you take what you can get. So here are my picks in chronological order.

Finding my first Ring OuzelI still remember this as if it were
yesterday. After years of trying to twitch other people’s Ring Ouzels, mainly
dipping, and finally driving to Hertfordshire for my first, I got up one October morningand said to Mrs L that I was
going out to find a Ring Ouzel. Remarkably that is exactly what I did, I
rounded a corner near Esso Copse and came face to face with a fantastic male
Ouzel. I still can’t quite believe it. Unfortunately I was not writing a blog in 2008 so the world remained ignorant, but I repeated the feat the following spring. If you fancy seeing how amateur (even more amateur) my blog was back then, you
can check it out here.

Lapwings, Jack Snipe and Golden Plover

This might still take the prize as the best
patch day ever – bitterly cold, snow in the air and on the ground, and over the
course of that February in 2012 day I saw close to 400 Lapwings.Given that seeing even one Lapwing in any given year can be rather a challenge,
this was and remains nothing short of sensational. They came in wave after
wave, each floppy flock being greeted with increasing enthusiasm. It was one of
those days where we could do no wrong. Whilst checking out a Med Gull on Alex,
itself a rare bird, a Jack Snipe dropped onto the ice which was a tick for
everyone. Whilst we drank in the Snipe movement overhead caught my attention
and a group of six Golden Plover flew over us, another patch tick. I believe my shout was heard on
the Essex coast. You can read about it here.

A large fall of Wheatears
Spring 2013 was notable for a really
delayed passage. Migrating birds were held back on the continent by poor
weather and for weeks we got practically nothing. And then the floodgates
opened and we were deluged. One particular morning I went out on the Flats to
discover that it had started, and standing at the VizMig point and turning 360
degrees I could see over 20 Wheatears. Given my affinity for this species, the
experience was magic. As before, the original is here.

Grasshopper Warbler in the morning,
Red-legged Partridge in the evening
Birding plans changed rapidly one
spring morning when Tim called to say that he had a Gropper in the Old Sewage
Works whilst surveying reptiles. At this time of the year all the action is typically on the Flats, and it is a good twenty minute walk. As one we hoofed
it over there, with Marco beating us all as he had a bike. Whilst watching this
great new addition to the patch list we then got news of a visiting birder
(Barry, one third of the trio that also contains Harry and Larry/Stuart) had
seen a Red-legged Partridge on the Flats where we had all just been! With work
looming I charged back there but couldn’t refind it before I had to leave.
Naturally those patch workers lucky enough not to be saddled with employment
enjoyed it at their leisure not long after whilst I had to sweat it out in
Canary Wharf. I fully expected it to be eaten by a dog during the day, but
nonetheless left work early hoping I might be lucky. I was lucky! I found it pottering around under a set of goalposts on
one of the playing fields, and had enough time to dash home, grab a camera and
get back to it before the sun set. A memorable day, which can be relived here.

Thousands of Hirundines
All of us old and new remembered this day,
being as it was relatively recent and entirely amazing - September 21st 2015. Most of us had never
seen anything like it anywhere, let alone on home turf. A trickle of hirundines
became a torrent. I still can’t think of an adequate way to convey it really,
you just had to be there. Thousands up thousands of birds passing from knee height to hundreds of metres up. Almost as quickly as it started it stopped again, but
that hour or so will – and I honestly mean this – be with me for the rest of my
life. That’s the power of birding. Here’s how I wrote about it at the time.

Yellow-browed Warbler, 3 Ring Ouzels, flock
of White-fronted GeeseThis was
only last year but still creeps into the annals of Wanstead Birding as being
worthy of inclusion. The whole event lasted a matter of minutes, but was amongst
the most exciting moments on the patch that I have ever experienced. In a
nutshell we were all celebrating a Yellow-browed Warbler, the first one that
had been multi-observed, when three Ring Ouzels came up out of Motorcycle Wood
and circled the western Flats. As this was happening a skein of Geese came in
from the west making a slightly unfamiliar honking. It took a while for us to
register the difference, but these were no regular Geese, this was a genuine
flock of autumn White-fronts, long distance migrants from a long way north. A
number of us had had two full-fat patch ticks in as many minutes, and we all
agreed that as far as mornings go this was right up there. Again, you had to be
there, but I hope that my original post goes some way to setting the scene.

Saturday, 16 September 2017

Wouldn't it be nice to wander round unencumbered by a camera I said to myself this morning. Wouldn't it be lovely to have no excess weight to lug around. Just me and my bins, back to basics. I rarely get decent opportunities on the Flats anyway, too busy. I'll just leave the whole lot at home, wonderful. I don't know if any of you readers who are also keen on photography feel the same way, but whilst I feel rather 'naked' without my camera I also feel liberated - it comes with being able to be a birder as well, a birder first probably.

And it was rather nice early on as I trotted around my usual circuit. Quiet and uneventful, but extremely pleasant, as the sun rose a low mist formed across the area. I met Tony by Alex, nothing doing, and together we headed back to the VizMig point. A pair of Little Owls caught his attention in one of the copses, the first time I've set eyes on them this year having had a "heard only" experience during the summer. They flew up from the ground and into the canopy, not to be seen again, but we think we now know where the nest hole might be.

Over to the usual area by the brooms for a bit of a chat and Bob spots a distant Chaffinch. In fact the Hawthorn it is in is alive, three Chiffchaff, various Tits and also a spanking male ChaffinchCommon Redstart! You can never get that close to Redstarts here, and there is always a lot of foliage etc, I was perfectly happy not to have a camera. Meanwhile Bob and Tony advance on the tree. And get closer. And closer. And closer. The Redstart pops up on a bare branch right in front of them, sits stock still and puffs out its chest. A torrent of shutter abuse follows, whereupon they gather around Tony's camera and high-five each other. Then Bob zooms up his and they exchange hugs and punch the air. They are amongst the best Redstart photos I think I have ever seen! Reluctantly, and with my tail firmly between my legs, I head home to dig out my lens. Why does this always happen?It was still there when I got back about a quarter of an hour later, and meanwhile James had been having his fill. I must say it was a friendly little thing, but that soft morning light had rather disappeared. My best efforts are below, and whilst I'm pleased, I am nonetheless left ruing my early morning decision to travel light as the opportunity earlier on was simply golden. Nevermind, it was a little beauty and I don't think I've seen one better, here or anywhere else, and I hadn't expected to see one again this year so rather a treat. Other bird highlights were 50 or so Swallow, a couple of three species of Wagtail, and some good Meadow Pipit action.

This final image is actually a composite of two images with some funky leaf work, inspired by one of my fellow patch-workers!

Thursday, 14 September 2017

It will perhaps surprise you to know that at
work I am known as a fashionista. Whether this is because I once went to Milan,
or because I frequently have something to say about what my team (all much younger than me) are wearing I’m
not sure. More likely is that this is an inside joke based on my own low
standards of sartorial elegance. To put this into context, my favourite shirt
dates from 1999 and I still wear it. It was once white but is now more of a grey
colour, and it is fair to say that they don’t make shirts like this anymore. I love it like and old friend, and equate its longevity with unrivalled quality – they made things properly in the
last century. I also still wear some shoes that I bought in 1997, although there is a
slight element of Trigger’s Broom about those. Anyway, all I am trying to say is
that when it comes to fashion I am the last person that should be allowed any
say whatsoever in what constitutes as being well dressed.

So naturally this is exactly what I am going
to do. I have one major objection to the 2017 ‘look’, and this is the phenomenon
of Velociraptor Trousers that seems to be sweeping the nation. You probably know
what I am talking about – this is where somebody crafts a perfectly serviceable
pair of trousers or leggings or whatever, and then throws them into a cage of
raging dinosaurs which then rip them to shreds. The dinosaurs are then
distracted allowing the what is left of the trousers to be retrieved, at which
point they are then shipped to shops up and down the land where they sell like
hot cakes. Seen someone wearing some recently? I bet you probably have as they're everywhere. I simply cannot understand what would motivate somebody to wear
trousers that are basically a few threads away from falling to bits. What is
even more daft is that they have been deliberately ruined and the whole scenario
was completely avoidable. Make the trousers, sell them to somebody. Skip the
dinosaurs.

Some of the examples I have seen are
probably more slash than actual material. Now I draw the line at wandering round
taking photos of peoples’ legs, so I’ve stolen all of these ones from the internet.
In the cold light of day tell me that this isn’t ridiculous? One slip or scrape
and you’ll have nothing left! I mean some of my trousers do eventually end up
looking a bit like this, but that’s only after a decade or so of exemplary
service and it is always a sad day when they finally give up the ghost. To
deliberately waste ten years of good wearing is nothing more than
vandalism. Just say no!WARNING - BIRD CONTENT!Sorry about this, but as this is obviously a birding blog it would be remiss of me not to stay on message. On Wanstead Flats last weekend I saw, amongst other things, a Tree Pipit, a Yellow Wagtail, and three Whinchats. Not sure what else the autumn has to give at this point other than Ring Ouzel, but I live in hope.

Saturday, 9 September 2017

It felt good on the patch this morning, with three Whinchats, a Tree Pipit, several Yellow Wagtails, a Swallow and a Garden Warbler. Plenty of Warbler activity in the bushes with double figures of Blackcap too, but the big one continues to elude us all. Inland patch working is hard, even in September. Non-avian highlights included a bacon roll that showed very briefly, and this pristine Fox which spent a fair amount of time playing with what I think was a dead vole. Nice to see one that doesn't resemble the living dead.

Wednesday, 6 September 2017

I was lucky enough to be in America for the
Solar Eclipse last month. We were on a family holiday in California and on the
day in question were in Yosemite. I had planned ahead and bought five pairs of
solar viewing glasses. Amusingly/irritatingly depending on your point of view,
one of my daughters dropped hers into the river about 3 minutes before the
eclipse was due to start, the best laid plans and all that, so I made do with my 10x ND filter combined with a circular polarising filter and sunglasses! This provided just about sufficient
protection to allow decent views, and also when stuck on a lens, a few photos.
Yosemite wasn’t quite far enough north, the best nearby views would have been up
in Oregon, but nonetheless we enjoyed about 75% coverage. It didn’t get dark per
se, just rather dull for about an hour – even 25% of the sun is enough to
provide a lot of light! Our views were somewhat stymied by clouds for a large
part of the event – that day in Yosemite and the previous day in San Francisco
were the only days we even saw a cloud, so not the best timing, but at least we
were there and gave ourselves a chance. And to see it whilst stood underneath
the Half Dome is something we’ll all remember for a long
time!

Tuesday, 5 September 2017

So this write-up has taken a little while to get around to, describing as it does a trip I made in late April. I have no defence really, I have just pushed this from one to-do list to the next for months. Finally I revisited my field notes/diary thing and have been able to remember exactly what I did and what order I did it in. Thank god for actual pen and paper, a dying art. However as you don't have access my physical scrawlings you have to make to with digital ones. Surprisingly these trip reports seem to be the least popular of anything I bash out; people tend to prefer schadenfreude and stupidity. In a sense who can blame them as this is probably the closest I come to "I went here and saw this". Anyway, I went to Lake Kerkini in Greece and saw....

Logistics

A long
weekend in the last week in April, leaving Saturday morning and returning on
Monday lunchtime.

British
Airways operate a seasonal Gatwick route to Thessaloniki, and from there it is
about an hour or so by car. In the winter (for Pelican photography) you would
need to go on Easyjet which does not go every day, or take Aegean Air via
Athens, which does.Birded
around and on the lake (a couple of cheap boat trips) for the whole time.Two nights at
the lakeside Morfi Hotel for under £100. Yes, an actual hotel with an actual
bed! Sometimes I can be normal.

Car hire at
Thessaloniki for about £50 for a Nissan Micra or something. Very cheap and
cheerful.

Day 1I had to get up at a crazy time in the morning to make the 7am departure from Gatwick. In the end I breezed it but this was the first time I had used the night tube and I was a bit worried. In the event that part was fine but it was a little odd walking from Bank to Blackfriars laden with camera gear in what was effectively the middle of the night! We arrived on time at around midday, and after collecting the car I headed north, skirting the city of Thessaloniki on route 25, eventually joining routes 2 and then 12 before striking off on small country roads up towards the lake. When I reached Lithotopos I unpacked all the gear and started birding my way around the lake anticlockwise. The first thing I noticed is that singing Nightingales were absolutely everywhere, it was quite incredible. I stopped the car near one particularly loud one and immediately found a Woodchat Shrike - this was going to be a good trip I felt!

Woodchat Shrike

Heading west
from Chrisochorafa I found my way up onto the raised track that borders the
lake at this point and surveyed the scene. Wow! The entire north-east corner of
the lake was a flooded forest. Cattle were grazing on the drier parts, but the
numbers of water birds was astonishing, particularly Great Crested Grebe. It was quite hazy but there were
seemingly vast clouds of birds further out. I continued along this track to the village of Megalochori - quite bumpy but quite manageable in a normal car. This was notable for quite a few White Stork nests, and from here I drove the very short distance to the Struma bridge on the way to Vironia. There is a small Bee-eater
colony here, although a word of warning - there are some pretty unpleasant dogs here as a lot of grazing takes place. West of the bridge are some excellent woodlands, and I happily birded around this area for
a couple of hours before continuing around the lake to the old harbour at
Mandraki. This too was an excellent spot for birding with numerous Squacco
Herons, Egrets, fly-by Pelicans and all manner of other water birds. In
the distance however I could see boats with people on, and they seemed to be
coming from a certain direction. This was what I had come for - I felt sure that if I drove around the lake I
would find wherever it was they were coming from.

It's not just birds. You can see more at www,justbirdphotos.com

So it was that I eventually I
found my way around to the village of Kerkini itself, and there to the pier directly to the SE
of the town. It being a Saturday boat trips were in full swing and I booked
myself onto one leaving in about an hour and went off to check into my hotel
and find some food and some cash. In the end I had to go to Rodopoli for the
latter, there are no cash machines at all in Kerkini. In fact the whole area is
extremely underdeveloped - a great thing for birds and birding, but a little
bit of a bind if you are after things that make the world go round. Like money. Supermarkets
are non-existent, and the various corner shops are very depressing indeed. You
can see that austerity and the precarious nature of Greece's economy has hit
this area very hard. All the more reason to spend some tourist euros here in my
opinion, and so I bought various horrible bits of food from these shops to do
my bit. Grim is the word - I suspect most people subsist on what they grow and
farm so there just isn't a market for convenience.At about
6.30pm and once the sun's harshness had gone, my boat set off across a
mirror-like lake. The departure point is on the west side whereas the sunken
forest is on the east side, so the first part of the trip is always pretty
uneventful. Eventually you get to this area, and that's when you start getting
Pelicans and Pygmy Cormorants flying past the boat at eye level. In short it
was superb, but it wasn't really a photography tour, more of a taster for what
might be possible on a more dedicated trip. Terns, Herons, Egrets, Spoonbills,
and of course more Dalmatian Pelicans than I had ever seen - there are some man-made islands, essentially vast nesting platforms. These birds were
the main reason that I had booked this trip, not realising then that winter was
the season for the best photography - I guess I was somewhat trigger-happy, saw
a cheap flight to Thessaloniki and booked immediately. Subsequent research
revealed that everyone came in the winter months to get the Pelicans in
breeding plumage. Ooops. Still, no worries, I knew that there would nonetheless
be a fabulous selection of south-eastern European breeding birds and that I would
doubtless enjoy myself immensely.

The boat trip lasted roughly an hour and cost €8, not at all bad for such good
views of loads of birds. I organised there and then that I'd do a repeat trip, and met Vasilis Arabatzis at the Oikoperiigitis Hotel later that evening to organise it. Vasilis
is the main man, or at least one of the main men, for Lake Kerkini bird
photography. Most of the amazing Pelican photos you see have probably involved
his boat in some way shape or form. He has it all sewn up actually as it's his
hotel too, and whereas the whole area is a bit sad, clearly his business is
thriving on the basis of bird photography. As well as discussing plans for a
winter return visit, 7am on Monday morning was agreed for a second boat
trip. Dinner was €7, another reason I really like Greece.Day 2I got up
early and for some woodland birding on the north side of the lake. The plan was
to see if I could pick up some new species for the trip, particularly
Grey-headed Woodpecker which is present year-round. The best area per various
trip reports are the tracks north of the river and south of the main road, so I
parked the car up next to what looked to be an abandoned swimming pool complex
just east of Vironia, and headed south into the area almost immediately
crossing some railway tracks. These are in use, albeit infrequently, so look
and listen before you cross!! The area was very productive with lots of birds
of the type you would expect, particularly rich in Nightingale and Cuckoo in
all wooded areas, and in Corn Buntings in more open areas like fields. Once
again non-intensive agriculture is clearly responsible for a far better selection
of birds that we get in the UK. Despite tracking down some promising drumming
and calls, I never managed to see the Grey-headed Woodpecker, but I did get
excellent views of Lesser Spotted and Great Spotted along with lots of other birds.
You can eventually get quite close to the river, and in the flooded margins
here were the usual Squacco Herons and Egrets.I walked a mostly circular route
which took me first east towards the bridge, and then west alongside the north
side of the river on various tracks until I reached a farm and could go no
further, at which point I headed more or less directly back up to the road and
walked alongside the railway tracks until I refound my car.

Pleasingly large numbers of Corn Bunting

By now it
was early afternoon. I had read about some productive ditches on the east side
of the lake, and headed off there, stopping off at the Bee-eater colony to
enjoy those for a little bit longer. The ditches are reached by driving into
the village of Chrisochorafa and taking the south-eastern route out and towards
the lake. As you approach the lake you hit some farm buildings, and if you take
an obviously white unpaved track that heads NNE and to the right of the larger
buildings you will soon see the irrigation channel. Simply drive
alongside these ditches for some really good birding – I turned right and spent
the rest of the afternoon enjoying numerous close encounters with Great Reed
Warblers, Whinchats and Yellow Wagtails. The best photography opportunities are
from the car, so make sure you hire something appropriate – either a 4x4, or if
you are a cheapskate like me, the lightest possible micro-sized car as these
can generally be coaxed over some quite rough terrain where a heavy saloon
would struggle. What I had not ever realised is that Whinchats really like
reedbeds for some reason, and they were very closely tied to the stands of
reeds that lined the irrigation channels. Throughout my time here I was also
constantly treated to fly-over Herons and Egrets.

Whinchat. Better than Wheatear? Jury is out....

Ooof!

Great Reed Warbler

I spent the
final part of the day at Mandraki trying to get better photos of Squacco
Herons. This was only partially successful because the pier at the end is quite a
popular spot for early evening strolls and there was a fair bit of disturbance
which caused the birds to remain distant, or fly off when they had returned
closer. Very frustrating when you have been squatting patiently for half an
hour and bird is very nearly now coming into range only for a passing
pedestrian out to admire the view to flush it back fifty metres! Loads of birds
though, including more Wood Sandpipers than I think I have ever seen. They were
literally everywhere and even with just binoculars I got really excellent
views.

Day 3Another
really early start as today was not only my final day, but also the day of the
second boat trip. We met at the Oikoperiigitis Hotel,
and after a coffee for the assembled boat passengers we went down to the lake
and got on the boat. It was immediately apparent that conditions were not as
good as the first evening, with quite a breeze causing what had been a lovely still surface to be quite choppy, but we set off east anyway. In
contrast to the evening trip, even from a distance we could see a lot of bird
activity, including what looked like a massive Pelican feeding
frenzy. We were soon at the other side of the lake quite near to Mandraki,
and Vasilis positioned the boat to drift alongside the activity, to the extent
that he was not limited by the very shallow water levels. In short it was
fantastic, with excellent views of feeding birds, and of birds flying to and
from roosting areas to feeding areas. By excellent views I mean through
binoculars, as photography-wise it didn’t really tick the box due to light and
priority being given to a boat full of passengers who were happy with bird
snaps rather than anything else. This was fine with me; as previously mentioned I now know that the key period for the kind of images seen on the web is in winter, and I am in the process of crafting a plan for that. So I was simply happy to be there and be soaking up
what was quite a spectacle. Dalmatian Pelicans of course, but also White Pelicans, Spoonbills, Pgymy and Regular Cormorants, Common Terns, Black-crowned Night Herons, and lots and lots of hirundines.

Overall we
were out about an hour and a half, so when we got back to the dock I needed to
get my skates on as it wasn’t that long until my return flight. Returning to my
hotel I turned things around in exactly eleven minutes, which once back to
Thessaloniki gave me a little time to stop at various places and see what was
about, particularly the south-west corner of the lake which I hadn’t really
explored. Again lots of water birds and Pelicans, but nothing new at this late
stage. It should be about an hour to the airport, but it was quite hard to find
somewhere to refuel and I had to go out of my way. This meant I arrived at the
car hire place about 55 minutes before my flight left which is somewhat under
the recommended time frame! Luckily the airport is a doddle, and I was waiting
by the gate about 10 minutes later and boarded shortly afterwards. Yes I would
like a Gin and Tonic please! In summary: Northern Greece in spring? A big thumbs up from me!

Saturday, 2 September 2017

In the
birding world a “dude” is someone who rocks up sporting brand new Swarovskis
and a funny hat, and proceeds to misidentify Canada Geese and Wood Pigeons. It’s
a term used by non-dudes, i.e. birders who perceive themselves to be competent
and take pride in continuing to use fogged up east German Leicas from the 1960s,
to describe the ‘all the gear no idea’ brigade. Dudish behaviour may also
encompass the twitching of non-rare rarities, i.e. people falling over
themselves to see a Hoopoe or something, but may also be used to describe what just sounds to me like a
nice day out birding. I am often surprised at how frequently I see a birder who
has just had a regular day out on the coast describe this as duding, as
if they were somehow lowering themselves to the common denominator of the
masses by undertaking what all sounded rather pleasant and involved seeing some
nice birds. In this context anything other than thrashing a remote headland
probably counts as dude-like. If you go out anywhere you are likely to see
another person, or somewhere which is a known birding hot-spot, well I’m sorry
that apparently puts you in the dude bucket. No, the purest form of birding is solo, in
the rain, with only a pair of bins and a dog-eared notebook, on an island that
you had to swim to. I digress – what I trying to say is that essentially “dude”
is only really ever a pejorative term, at least in the context of people who
like to watch birds. You are a dude; I am better than you. I think many birders
can likely point to dudish aspects of their early birding career – I certainly
can, and whilst I can laugh about it now, back then I suspect I was completely
oblivious to my absurdities. Have a think back – when did you start to realise
that there were different types of birders? The real turning point is probably
when you first called somebody else a dude. Have you done that? To my shame, I have.

As I tend not to devote my entire life searching for "rares" and am quite fond nice wanders in promising places, for some birders I will
probably be forever dude. Whatever, and I do after all live in London, which as I will get to later on is actually relevant. However there are other ways in which I can be assigned the dude label. For instance in a couple of months I am taking one of my
daughters on holiday - it has been booked for a long time and we are going horse
riding in America. Well, more accurately she will be riding a horse, and I will
be sitting on a horse and hoping fervently that my horse just follows her horse and
that I don’t have to do anything. And that I don’t fall off. She loves horses,
and is excited by all the grooming, petting, and whatever else it is you do
with horses other than ride them. I am terrified, horses and large and
dangerous, and they also smell. And after a day riding a horse you also smell - cars exist for a reason. But this is her special holiday and
not mine, and she will be happy. At some point after I booked it I mentioned the
trip to my Mum. She is American and knows all about horses having spent many of
her childhood summers on a family ranch in Napa, and she immediately called it
a Dude Ranch, and then hesitated as soon as she had said it. Interesting, is
dude also a word with negative connotations in other walks of life? The conversation
continued and I forgot all about it until last week.

Two things then happened. Firstly I had to fork
out the balance for the horsey holiday as up until then I had only put down a deposit. And secondly I
watched the Big Lebowski. You will have to forgive me if the Big Lebowski is
not a film that you are familiar with. In a nutshell it is a very silly story
that revolves around a bowling alley in Los Angeles and the heroic failures of
a central character known as “The Dude” (or El Duderino if you’re not into the whole brevity thing). It is possibly one of my favourite films ever, mostly for
the sheer joy and stupidity of Walter Sobchack, the character played by John
Goodman. I am essentially unable to pass up watching the Big Lebowski if it is on
offer, and so travelling back from California last weekend (ironically enough
from LA) and scrolling through the entertainment options there it was, and I thus scorned all of the
new releases and immediately put it on. I know it word for word of course, a
bit like Star Wars, but that doesn’t matter and I still laughed my head off.
This of course is an entirely different use of the word dude. The Dude is basically
a bum, an unemployed layabout who goes shopping in his dressing gown and spends
his few waking hours at the bowling alley. Dark glasses, extremely laid back,
relaxed to the point of utter inertia. Cool, in other words, in a way that
possibly could only exist in Southern California.

Which brings me in a roundabout way back to
the beginning. Having recently heard the word Dude about a thousand times and paid the bill, I
then remembered the term my Mum had used and so looked up “Dude Ranch”. I was
surprised to find that it is actually a thing. Essentially it is a place where townies
like me can go and ride horses / pretend to be cowboys. An alternative name is a guest ranch,
but as a birder familiar with the usage of “dude” I think Dude Ranch is a lot
better. So this got me looking at how this use of the word might be broadly similar
to how it is used in birding – ie real country folk sneering at city slickers
in the same way that serious birders (too serious perhaps?) take the piss out of those who they perceive to be lesser birders. I was surprised to find that whilst there are clearly similarities, that the horsey equivalent is actually much
closer to the original meaning and usage. Whilst Dude has evolved to nowadays simply mean a bloke (e.g. look at that dude over there), it used
to be a term used to describe somebody obviously and conspicuously well-dressed.
Specifically this seems to have arisen in the American West, as wealthy people
from the more industrialised (and some may say more civilised) East coast used the new railroads to
start to visit what was at that point the Frontier; the Wild West. So even back
then the usage was pejorative, as the rough-hewn cowboys and ranch-hands of the
Frontier scathingly referred to the fancily-dressed city-folk that started to arrive
as dudes. Have you ever seen the masterpiece that is “Once Upon a Time in the
West”? Charles Bronson and Henry Fonda? The rail Baron in that, Mr. Morton, was a dude,
though there may have been fewer mentions of this than in the Big Lebowski. That
usage is probably closest to how the term dude ranch came to be formed – urbanites
playing at something they don’t understand in a western environment that they
are thoroughly unsuited to. As far as can tell though, the term dude ranch is
these days factual as opposed to insulting, even though some may not see it
that way.

Anyway, the next time I am out birding and
some know-it-all with half a pair of bins mutters something about bloody dudes,
I’ll tell them how pleased I am that they have recognized my undeniable sartorial
elegance, and that why yes, I have been horse-riding in the countryside
recently.